T-shirt to say: "I'm wearing post-consumer waste." Would you wear it?

By BEN EVANS
Associated Press Writer
Sept. 5, 2007

WASHINGTON - Coca-Cola Co. announced Wednesday that it will help build a $45 million recycling plant in South Carolina as it set a new goal to recycle or reuse every plastic bottle it sells in the United States.

The company did not set a target date for meeting that goal and acknowledged it has a long way to go. About 10 percent of its plastic bottles are recycled now, the company said.

"We've set an ambitious goal," Sandy Douglas, president of the company's North American division, said at a press conference in Washington. "We recognize that we still have a tremendous amount of work to do."

The 30-acre plant, to be built in Spartanburg, S.C., would produce about 100 million pounds of food-grade recyclable plastic per year. That's the equivalent of nearly 2 billion 20-ounce bottles or about 10 percent of the plastic used for U.S. production each year, the company said.

Much of the recycled material would be used to make new bottles and other Coca-Cola products, including T-shirts aimed at raising awareness through slogans such as, "I'm wearing post-consumer waste."

Coca-Cola will invest $44 million in loans and direct equity into the project, which is a joint venture with Spartanburg-based United Resource Recovery Corp. Carlos Gutierrez, United Resource Recovery Corp.'s president, said the company had tried unsuccessfully to arrange financing for the project for several years before Coca-Cola stepped in. It will employ about 150 people, he said.

Coca-Cola also announced Wednesday it will spend about $16 million more in 2007 to promote recycling through its own recycling division and through a partnership with RecycleBank, a Philadelphia-based company that encourages recycling by working with retail stores to offer discounts for participating households.

Betty McLaughlin, executive director of the nonprofit Container Recycling Institute, said the announcement could mark a step in the right direction. But she said beverage companies could do far more to reduce waste by financing private recycling systems or supporting bottle-deposit laws.

Deposit programs that provide refunds to consumers who return bottles have sharply boosted recycling rates in states that use them, she said.

"The missing link in the whole recycling chain is a collection system that is reliable," she said. "It's not that there isn't enough processing capacity."